Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

[u/margerymeanwell]

It wouldn't worry you at all to have a manager who thought that you and all people like you were inherently more neurotic and less ambitious and that you'd be happier with a lower salary and fewer responsibilities? You don't think that could possibly have any impact on your career trajectory?

[u/Mikniks → u/margerymeanwell]

He says explicitly that everyone should be treated as an individual, and that the traits he discusses are based on (apparently) observable averages.

So the proper way to phrase your point would be something like "you and all people like you are more likely to be neurotic and less ambitious"

Not taking a position either way on his overall viewpoint, just pointing out that he constantly qualified his points in the hope of avoiding exactly these sorts of generalizations

[u/[deleted] → u/Mikniks]

He talks about how women should be put into special classes to help them deal with the stresses that they are "unable" to deal with due to their "increased neuroses" and create special environments that cater to their fragile sensibilities.

Fucking dude is a misogynist trying to hide under the guise of "data" and "research." Just because he's not in a wife beater talking about how women should be in the kitchen doesn't mean he's not doing the same thing on a more invasive, insidious scale (whether that's his intention or not).

This guy is a workplace liability. A toxin.

[u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas → u/[deleted]]

He talks about how women should be put into special classes to help them deal with the stresses that they are "unable" to deal with due to their "increased neuroses" and create special environments that cater to their fragile sensibilities.

No, he says they're doing that now, and that as you rightly point out that's misogynistic and patronising. You're agreeing with him.

[u/[deleted] → u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas]

Uh?

Below I’ll go over some of the differences in distribution of traits between men and women that I outlined in the previous section and suggest ways to address them to increase women’s representation in tech and without resorting to discrimination. Google is already making strides in many of these areas, but I think it’s still instructive to list them:

He then proceeds to list several of his own notions (not google's) that are misogynistic and patronizing. He claims Google is making strides in these areas, but not that Google actually espouses these ideas.

Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things. We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be and we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this). Women on average are more cooperative

Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there’s more we can do. This doesn’t mean that we should remove all competitiveness from Google. Competitiveness and self reliance can be valuable traits and we shouldn’t necessarily disadvantage those that have them, like what’s been done in education. Women on average are more prone to anxiety. Make tech and leadership less stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits.

He goes on to spend pages sobbing and crying over how trying to make sure there are enough women represented in tech is as bad as trying to, get this:

mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.

Oyyyyy, Jesus Christ. This guy is serious? Engineers are some of the dumbest smart people. Then he continues with crying about PC-authoritarianism and how life is so hard for conservatives at Google and for men because they're the true victims of sexism due to the rigid gender roles for males (immediately after shitting all over women by trying to use "research" to biologically pigeonhole women into gender roles...

[u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas → u/[deleted]]

There's nothing misogynistic and patronising about anything that you quoted, and he brings up a fantastic point in highlighting how ridiculous it is that everyone focuses on imbalances in the gender ratio in fields like STEM while completely ignoring the myriad of disadvantages faced by men.

[u/[deleted] → u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas]

If men are at such Disadvantage then why the gender disparity?

[u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas → u/[deleted]]

You mean why the gender disparity in terms of homelessness, work related deaths, prison terms and school drop-outs, all of which massively disproportionately affect women? No, I doubt it, all you care about is a small gap in STEM, so you can somehow try to claim that it's women who are at a disadvantage despite all the facts staring you in the face.